June 19, 2012

Investigations in Greece have led to the arrests of two people (one a former policeman), for smuggling artefacts that are presumed to have come from an illegal excavation.

Illegal looting such a this will always be a problem in a country such as Greece with a very rich archaeological heritage – but efforts to police it need to be kept up during the current financial difficulties that the country faces.

THESSALONIKI, Greece — A retired policeman and a house painter have been arrested in northern Greece on suspicion of antiquities smuggling after an ancient gold wreath and armband were found in their car, police said Friday.

The suspects were stopped by highway police near the village of Asprovalta, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Thessaloniki late Thursday. Officers, who were working on a tip that the house painter might be trafficking in antiquities, found the 4th century B.C. artifacts in a shoebox under the passenger seat.Read the rest of this entry »

Greek Antiquities, Long Fragile, Are Endangered by Austerity
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: June 11, 2012

KYTHIRA, Greece — A jarring public-awareness ad that has appeared recently on Greek television news shows a little girl strolling with her mother through the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, one of the country’s cultural crown jewels. The girl skips off by herself, and as she stands alone before a 2,500-year-old marble statue, a hand suddenly sweeps in from behind, covering her mouth and yanking her away.

An instant later, she reappears, apparently unharmed but staring forlornly at an empty plinth: The kidnappers weren’t after the girl — they were after the statue.Read the rest of this entry »

Experts trained in recovering art looted during Nazi era
Millions of items stolen during WWII and Holocaust still unaccounted for; some pieces ending up in auction after elderly owners pass away
June 16, 2012, 1:56 am

BERLIN (AP) — Call them the looted treasure detectives.

Experts from museums, auction houses, government agencies and other institutions are meeting in Germany this week as part of an international effort to train art-world professionals in recovering art and cultural treasures looted during the Nazi era.Read the rest of this entry »

Turkey turns up the heat on foreign museums
The list of antiquities demanded gets longer as more exhibitions are hit by the loans boycott
By Martin Bailey. Museums, Issue 236, June 2012
Published online: 13 June 2012

Turkey is set on a collision course with many of the world’s leading museums, by refusing exhibition loans because of antiquities claims. European museums that are being targeted include the Louvre, Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In America, claims are being lodged against New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Cleveland Museum of Art and Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. Turkey’s tough new approach was first reported by The Art Newspaper (March 2012, p1, p10; April, p6).

Among the exhibitions that have been hit is a British Museum project on the Uluburun ship, the world’s oldest recovered wreck. Dating from the 14th century BC, it was discovered (with its cosmopolitan cargo) in 1982, six miles off the south-west Turkish coast. It was put on display 12 years ago at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. The British Museum was discussing an exhibition, along with reciprocal loans to Turkey, but this has had to be dropped because of Turkey’s claim for the Samsat stele.Read the rest of this entry »

Vienna’s Leopold Museum have settled with the claimants of Jenny Steiner to allow them to keep a painting by Egon Schiele. Previous court rulings had instructed the museum to return the painting, which had been looted by the Nazis. It is unclear what the cost of the settlement was for the museum.

To an extent, cases such as this point that there is more than one way to settling restitution cases – and that a case does not necessarily open the floodgates for the emptying of museums. In many cases, the original owners either don’t want, or don’t have the facilities to look after the artfacts in question, but are looking for some sort of compensation for its loss, or in some cases merely an acknowledgement that they are the legitimate owners of it.

Vienna’s Leopold Museum agreed to settle with the remaining claimants of Jenny Steiner to keep in its collection Egon Schiele’s “Houses by the Sea,” that was stolen by the Nazis.

The 1914 painting belonged to Steiner until she fled Austria in 1938, shortly after the Nazis marched into Vienna. She escaped to Paris and later emigrated to the U.S. with her two daughters. The painting was seized and sold by the Nazis, then later auctioned. Rudolf Leopold, the founder of the Leopold Museum, acquired it in 1955.Read the rest of this entry »

Third Year Anniversary of the Opening of the New Acropolis Museum
By Areti Kotseli on June 15, 2012

The New Acropolis Museum in Athens celebrates its three years of existence with a series of events on its premises Wednesday, June 20th. Exhibition spaces will remain open to the public from 8.00 a.m. to midnight and general admission will be offered with a festive 3-Euro ticket.

Famous soloists and eminent musicians will be entertaining visitors in every exhibition space of the museum performing ancient music, music of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras and separate works of the 20th century.Read the rest of this entry »

Recordings of the debate will be broadcast on BBC World News at 09:10 and 21:10 on 23 June, and 02:10 and 15:10 on 24 June. All times GMT.

For those of you in the UK, note that this is GMT, not BST. Furthermore, note that BBC World News is not available to watch online in USA, UK or Japan.

So – you can’t watch it on TV in the UK, unless you have foreign satellite TV already (not Sky, as they don’t carry it). A lot of countries in Europe broadcast BBC World News however – for more details see the BBC website page for the channel. As far as I know, it will also be available on the Intelligence Squared Youtube channel after the TV broadcast date.

June 15, 2012

It isn’t feasible to return all the artefacts that have left Greece throughout history & I don’t think anyone is seriously advocating this. However, one should reflect on how much of Greece’s wealth has been used to enrich the museums & collections of other countries, when in most cases Greece was given no compensation.

God bless and save Greece. May God bless Greece and all the Greeks as you make one of the biggest democratic decisions of your lives on June 17. The early Greeks invented Democracy more than 2 milleniums ago, so you should know ’the ropes’, so let us all hope and pray you make the right decision as you go to the polls on June 17. Be very mindful when you vote of how it will affect Greece.

I am an Australian and have loved your beautiful country since I first stepped foot on it in 1996. It had a certain magnetism that invited me back time and time again. I wanted to explore every Greek island and place and achieved seeing many, Mykonos, Tinos, Andros, Santorini, Paros, Ios, Naxos, Rodos, Crete, Patmos, Corfu, Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca, and there are still many, many more beautiful islands there to see, if only I could.Read the rest of this entry »

More coverage of the debate earlier this week about he reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. As well as the vote taken after the UK debate, one was also made at the end of the live broadcast of it at the Acropolis Museum – which predictably found an either higher level of support than in Britain.

This story has also had a lot of additional coverage, as a paragraph at the end of an AP article, that has been syndicated by many newspapers internationally.

“We Will Never Repay the Debt that We Owe Greece”: Actor Stephen Fry Calls for Parthenon Marbles to Be Sent Back
by ARTINFO UK
Published: June 13, 2012

The Eurozone may be in tatters, and Greece about to return to the drachma, but on Monday very different matters were at hand. A debate organized by Intelligence Squared held at London’s Cadogan Hall and screened live at the Acropolis Museum in Athens reignited the passions around the Elgin marbles. And Stephen Fry stood out as an unlikely hero of the Hellenic cause.

The Elgin marbles were stripped from the Parthenon and brought to the UK in the 19th century by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador in Constantinople when the Turks controlled Greece. The priceless sculptures have been held at the British Museum ever since, and although the British government claims that they were legally acquired, they have been a sore point in the cultural relationship between the two countries for just as long.Read the rest of this entry »

Lewis Chessmen to return to Western Isles
Rebecca Atkinson, 14.06.2012British Museum also announces series of regional loans

Six of the Lewis Chessmen are to go on permanent display at Lews Castle, Stornoway, from 2014 as part of a loan agreement between Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) and the British Museum.

The medieval chess pieces will be displayed in a new museum funded by a £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund grant and supported by National Museums Scotland (NMS) and the British Museum.Read the rest of this entry »

I find this story interesting for a number of reasons, as there are certain comparisons that can be drawn with the case of the Parthenon Marbles (although there are of course many differences). Historically, when Greece has requested the return of the Elgin Marbles, the British Museum has fallen back on the anti-deaccessioning clauses in the 1963 British Museum Act, which the institution is legally obliged to abide by. Greece in response has on various occasions suggested that the reunification of the Marbles could still be possible in the form of a long term / or renewable loan, whereby the British Museum would still retain the ownership rights, but the sculptures would be in display in Athens.

It has been suggested by some at the British Museum that such an action could not constitute a loan – that a loan can only be for a short term & that anything else is ownership be another name (& therefore forbidden under the British Museum Act 1963).

So it would appear that there is good evidence, in multiple cases, that something described as a long term loan is a possible means of returning artefacts.

Now back to the similarities between the Elgin Marbles & the Lewis Chessmen (& also the differences).

Firstly, the Lewis Chessmen (at least the ones being returned to Scotland) are currently housed in the British Museum, with others in Edinburgh.

Secondly, a new museum has been built, to display the artefacts, countering the argument that there is nowhere to house them safely if they were returned.

The differences however, are that the Scottish are (I presume) acknowledging that the British Museum owns the Lewis Chessmen & tat only a few of the chessmen are actually returning – this is a small percentage of the total – and there don’t appear to be any plans to expand this loan, whereas Greek requests have been for all of the Parthenon Marbles that are in the Museum.

The Lewis Chessmen are not such a clear cut case as that of the Parthenon Marbles – they are loose items, that were probably in the process of travelling when they ended up in Lewis – there is nothing known to connect them to the island, other than the fact that it is where they were rediscovered. Indeed, arguments have been made that they rightfully belong in Norway. The Parthenon Marbles on the other hand, are part of a larger whole – the frieze panels themselves are not only like the pages of a book split between two locations, but were designed to form part of a work of architecture (the Parthenon) which still survives. On top of this, there is no suggestion that the Chessmen ended up in the British Museum illegally, unlike the contested details of the firman used by Elgin to validate his ownership of the Parthenon Sculptures.

So – on the basis of the existing cases, what does it take to get the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece? Does it all come down to acknowledging ownership? This fact has been a stumbling block with previous attempts to negotiate with the the British Museum. Or if the ownership was acknowledged, would the British Museum then fall back on other reasons for blocking the return – with the end reason being that it just doesn’t want to return them? Perhaps we should look at it as two interwoven disputes here – one over ownership & one over the location for display / reunification of the sculptures. One possible way out, is of course to bring (& win) legal action in a British or international court, over the ownership of the Marbles.

The other point to bear in mind, is that these terms might only secure the return of a small portion of the sculptures – although the hope if that if the return of a small portion was successful & the terms of the loan agreement were met, then te return of the remainder would follow as a logical conclusion to the process.

At least six Lewis chessmen to return home after deal struck with British Musuem
Published on Wednesday 13 June 2012 22:09

SIX of the priceless world famous chessmen will feature in the permanent displays at the new Museum and Archive at Lews Castle when it opens in 2014 after a £13.5m revamp.

The chessmen will be on “permanent loan” to the new museum

Previously Western Isles MP Mr MacNeil has demanded the “repatriation” of the British Museum’s 82 priceless Viking chess pieces back to Scotland. Another 11 are in the hands of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.Read the rest of this entry »

After briefly returning to Scotland in 2010, some of the Lewis Chessmen are going to return on a semi permanent basis to the island where they were discovered. It is unclear how much SNP leader Alex Salmond’s demands for their return have led to this decision & moreover, whether the British Museum is getting anything in return for the deal. I am very interested to find out more details of the exact loan agreement that has been made.